


Miracles on Ice

by DestielsDestiny



Category: Houdini & Doyle (TV)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Chicken Soup, Fluff, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, Grief/Mourning, Ice, M/M, Snow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-25
Updated: 2016-05-25
Packaged: 2018-06-10 15:28:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6962560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DestielsDestiny/pseuds/DestielsDestiny
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He’s never made a study of it to be sure, but Arthur Doyle is rather certain that it is significantly colder in Michigan than it is ever supposed to be in London.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Miracles on Ice

**Author's Note:**

> I own nothing.

It was cold. A rather inane understatement, but the foggy edges of Doyle’s rapidly slipping into hypothermic mind seems steadily more incapable of formulating a more loquacious descriptor. 

“Hey Doc-c-c, did ya know it’s blo-oody fre-ezing right a-bbout now.” Fortunately for his brain Doyle thinks with sudden, sharp exasperation, Harry Houdini is apparently capable of being equally annoying no matter what the weather. 

“Yes thank you Harry, I had noticed a slight chill in the air now that you mention it. The snow was hard to miss though, so good thing you where able to deduce it.” Normally such verbal thrusts would be a cause of Doyle’s blood pumping faster, his hands curling in slight aggravation. 

Normally, they aren’t huddled together on the battered remains of a shelf of winter ice in the middle of the bloody Thames of all places, a body of water that Doyle is fairly sure hasn’t frozen over in a good century or more. Fairly sure. Recent history was never his most favourite subject at school, nor were the Jesuits particularly up on the history of inclement weather. 

Doyle never thought he’d have occasion to regret that particular oversight in his rather cold upbringing, but damn it all if he isn’t muttering every curse he can think of in the back of his mind towards those cold, well-meaning church fathers as he hitches the sodden, compact form of the great, death-defying Harry Houdini himself higher up in his arms in a vain effort to ward off the chills raking the suspiciously limp bundle. 

Harry has never been still in all the time that Doyle has known him, and for all that the shaking in his limbs is becoming dangerously violent, something about the languid stiffness permeating the form in his arms is enough to shake Doyle to his core. 

The air that is rasped towards his neck in the next instant is chillingly frigid, the voice even more shaky. “N-o-oo pro-blem Docc-c-c, is-what Im h-er-e fo-rr. Gotta ke-eeep you o-n you-ur t-t-toe-sss.” A mass of rapidly icing over sodden curls flops sharply against his cheek, as the rasping emanating through both their chests increases alarmingly. 

Doyle allows some of the fear he’s been valiantly holding back with every increased shake to enter his voice as he desperately attempts to get his fingers to bend enough to tip Harry’s head back up. 

“Houdini! You have to stay awake! Do you hear me you, you third-rate street entertainer, you have to keep your head up! Houdini!” 

A wet rattle is the only response for the longest moment, fingers Doyle can no longer feel scrapping snow and frozen velvet indiscriminately as Doyle lets loose a string of vile curses he would blush as in any other circumstances. The epithets are directed partly at the seemingly inert bundle resting between his chest and the dirty ice that is rapidly becoming their final boat to an icy afterlife, and partly, mostly really, at the two-bit criminal that had led them on a merry, sliding chase through the frigid London streets, not even a murderer, just a rather unsuccessful thief who decided to stage a clumsy robbery in the coldest, slipperiest, iciest January in recent memory. 

Said two-bit budding criminal had then suddenly proceeded to elude even the great illusionist himself of course, after a chase through London’s back alleys that would have been merry if not for the aforementioned bloody weather, which unwittingly turned the amateur thief into a master fugitive, simply because he wasn’t wearing expensive shoes and therefore didn’t have the same slipping problems that hindered the police to what would have been rather amusing degrees, if not for the bloody weather again. 

That, and great, death-seeking Harry Houdini, who after the third or forth near miss had absconded across the roofs high above all their heads, a big cheesy grin plastered on his wind-pinked cheeks, his curls dancing in time with his nimble, heart pounding leaps. 

Part of Doyle had wanted to wring the crazy American’s fool neck on the spot, if for the unnecessary increase in Doyle and Constable Stratton’s blood pressure levels if nothing else, because it was just a daft paper thief for goodness sake. Another, larger part had just been giddy with the first real, genuine, undiluted Houdini smile he had had the privilege to witness since their ill-fated sojourn to the New World. 

Busy picking his way after Houdini, muttering about how it had been warmer in bloody Canada, somehow hopelessly turned around from any and all members of Scotland yard, Doyle was not proud of the fact he had completely missed the shove which had catapulted him towards the edge of the Thames. He wasn’t even sure if it had been the thief who had done the shoving, just that Houdini had subsequently, in the space of less than a minute, rescued him from falling through the ice and then promptly managed to fall in himself. 

Which led them in a meandering fashion back to their current predicament, balanced dangerously, pathetically, on the edge of the Thames’ somehow partially frozen bulk, Houdini rapidly descending into the dangerously still final stages of hypothermia, Doyle hoping his hands were not completely frostbitten yet but otherwise in much better shape than his dashing rescuer. 

The abrupt cessation of the raspy rattling breaks Doyle off in mid curse, as frozen elbows creak alarmingly in the doctor’s sudden rush to shove the magician off of him. Numb hands somehow find purchase on a waistcoat as icy blue as the actual ice forming in layers across its velvety smooth surface, as Arthur forces his arms to pump up and down with bruising efficiency. 

“Come on Houdini, you are not dying on me. Not like this. Just think of what the headlines would say.” An eternity seems to pass between pumps, renewed blood flow causing happily painful stabs of feeling to ghost across frigid digits, an eternity in which Doyle calls Houdini every name he can think of, over and over, no longer sure if he’s speaking aloud or not. No longer caring. 

Tears crystallize in place on his face, dashed away by wind and ice, never making it far enough to drip onto the deathly still ribcage caving alarmingly beneath his laced hands. “God damnit Harry, don’t you dare do this to me. Don’t make me explain this to them. Don’t make me lose you too!”

He isn’t sure where the words come from, ripped from the frozen depths of his heart that Touie’s inevitable death had iced over. It had been less that a month ago, just before Christmas, and for all the expectedness of it, Doyle honestly doesn’t know how any of them would have made it through if not for the man he’s currently trying to prevent becoming a corpse under his very eyes. 

He’s not sure what compels him to fasten his frozen lips over Harry’s blue ones, his rigid moustache scrapping alarmingly over Houdini’s pale skin. Hot air whistles between their parted mouths, once, twice, three times, as distant shouts filter into Doyle’s consciousness. 

He blinks rapidly as he raises his head towards the bank, aware of its existence for the first time in minutes. A gust of warm breath suddenly connects with the latest frozen tear on his right cheek, as ice blue eyes crack open miraculously. 

If he wasn’t as cold, if he wasn’t a doctor, Doyle would almost be tempted to cry fowl. As it is, all he can really do is wonder if he should maybe have listened more to those Jesuit fathers talk of miracles as cyanotic lips crack open, fresh red blood pulsing hot and thick and real down the face inches below his own. 

“Doo-cc. Yo—r-e a-grr-ea-at ki-sss-er yo-u knoo-ow th-at.” 

And maybe it’s a ridiculous reaction, but what isn’t ridiculous about any of this, because damned if Arthur Doyle doesn’t throw back his head right there, frost-bitten hands cradling the sides of Harry bloody Houdini’s nearly lifeless face, kneeling over a partly pulverized chest beneath an icy blue waistcoat accentuated by actual blue ice, in the middle of the bloody Thames itself, and burst out laughing. 

00

Everything is warm. It’s the first thought that filters into Harry’s tired brain, right before the distinct crackle of a wood fireplace follows, his ears catching the feint rustling of clothes, the muffled giggles of children’s voices from somewhere off in the distance. 

Cracking open eyelids that are somehow painfully heavy, Harry just makes out enough of the figure slumped beside the unfamiliar bed to bring a contented sigh to his lips. 

Edging a still cold hand out of the bedcovers just enough to reassure himself that the Doc is as solid and warm as he looks, Harry lets his eyelids win their battle to slide shut once more. 

He drifts off to the sounds of small feet running happily down carpeted halls, his dreams for once full of life and laughter and hope. 

00

It takes two weeks for Houdini’s fever to break, two weeks before Arthur is willing to so much as leave his side. Which goes a long way to easing Adelaide’s concerns about Doyle’s abscondment of Houdini to his spare bedroom, rather than the hospital. 

Doyle’s distinctly imperious “I am a doctor you know” had done rather less to reassure her than the honest to goodness contended sigh that Houdini had let out whenever Doyle had so much as come within three feet of his unconscious form. 

Addie used to have someone in her life who could comfort her like that, instinctive, primal, trusting and sure. 

She killed him for the men in front of her. A little privacy and discretion is the least she’s willing to give them now, after everything.

Harry wakes up, lucid and aware for the first time, on the fifteenth day. 

Doyle hovers like a mother hen, right up to and including bringing a steaming bowl of soup to his bedside later that afternoon. Seating himself on the edge of the bed, waistcoat just stiff enough to creak slightly as he turns towards Harry’s propped up form, napkin in one slightly bandaged hand and spoon hovering over the bowl, he only catches Harry’s smirk when he looks up as the spoon begins to dip into the bowl’s contents. 

“What?!” Doyle can honestly say he’s never been this grateful to feel exasperation again in his life. Harry’s smirk grows wider. 

“You made me soup?” Arthur tactfully ignores the careful omission of what kind of soup. It has been only slightly longer for Harry than it has for him. Still, his response is as natural with Harry as it ever was with Touie. That realization hurts less than it did a week ago.

“I am perfectly capable of cooking thank you very much.” Harry is full on grinning by this point, and Doyle is forced to concede some of the point. “Mary may have helped. But only a very little mind.” 

Harry, to his credit, wisely keeps his mouth shut. Right up until he suddenly slithers down in the pillows and captures the spoon between his teeth, slurping the contents with more energetic gusto than anyone recovering from pneumonia has a right to show. A little broth trickles out the edge of thankfully pink lips, a quick tongue darting out to lick the extra from smirking teeth. 

“This is really delicious Arthur.” The sincerity behind that shy grin takes Doyle’s breath away. 

Focusing raptly on fastidiously dipping the spoon into the broth for a second go, Arthur spares a moment to send a quick apology to his old teachers for all the curses he flung at them on that freezing ice shelf. 

They may have been wrong about a lot of things, but miracles weren’t one of them. 

Although, Doyle feels safe in the knowledge that whatever any of those old Jesuit fathers was picturing when they talked of miracles, they couldn’t possibly have predicted Harry Houdini.


End file.
